Urban Recycling

Kelsey Jones

This visual argument is extremely persuasive. It is an image of the Tower Bridge and the Eye of London buried under trash because the landfills are all full and no one is recycling. The text says, “Just when will you start recycling?” and the font makes it look like it is sort of trash itself. The text is white, making it appear as if it is a cutout on the trash piles. Perhaps this is meant to infer that when you do recycle, you cut out some of the landfill trash. The image is the strongpoint of the argument, with just a little bit of supplementing text. This impact of the visual is so strong that only a little bit of text is needed. The tiny bit of color in the image is mostly ­used in the bridge and the sky. This allows the audience’s eye to focus on the bridge as a main point and then realize that it is broken and covered in trash. A little bit of color is displaced throughout the trash helps with the feeling that this city has been abandoned because it is covered in trash and now disgusting.

The only thing that I would change about this advertisement is the word “just.” I don’t think it is necessary and I think the ad would become more concise if it read, “When will you start recycling?” However, adding the word “just” makes it sound like we are waiting and waiting for the general public to start recycling. If the “just” is taken away, perhaps the “you” should be given emphasis by enlarging it a little more so it read “when will YOU start recycling?”

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iDoWiz557Q

A University of Pennsylvania student made this youtube video about the issues with the recycling system of the university. He goes around the campus observing students throwing away recycling when there is a recycling bin right next to it, people being too lazy to get up and walk across the room to the recycling, and the janitors dumping the recycling into the trash bins.

The style of this video makes it more interesting to watch because it is not a normal PSA (public service announcement). It is in the style of old movies before they had sound, and an upbeat song plays in the background. I like the effects that were used because they grabbed my attention. The music, however, did not seem appropriate for the topic. It was talking about how people are not recycling like they should be, but the music was upbeat and happy. It should have been more gloomy and eerie because people were not doing what they were supposed to be doing. I think that if this video had less walking to happy music without accomplishing anything, and more visual examples of how the students and staff need to improve their recycling habits, the video would be very successful. I like the approach and the concept of the video but it just needed to be more compact and stuffed with knowledge rather than odd music and pointless walking.